Our batting has been exposed by England bowlers: Shoaib Akhtar

Former fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar has criticised Pakistan’s dismal performance in the second Test against England, saying that the team’s batting got completely exposed.

England beat Pakistan on Monday by a massive 330 runs to win the second Test at his Old Trafford home ground.

“One saw no planning in the entire match from a Pakistani perspective and as expected our batting has been badly exposed by the England bowlers,” Akhtar said.

“You can say our batting has been unmasked and exposed on a pitch which had bounce and nothing more. Our batting always struggles on surfaces with bounce that is why we toil in England and Australia,” he said.

Akhtar said he was very disappointed with the performance of the bowlers as well.

“There was no game plan on how to bowl on the Old Trafford pitch and the line was just not right and the intent was missing throughout the England innings,” he added.

Akhtar said Pakistan would find it very difficult to comeback in the series now after such a demoralising defeat.

Former Test captain Ramiz Raja said the defeat was the continuation of Pakistan cricket woes.

Our biggest problem is that our players just don’t adapt quickly enough to different conditions. And the problem of consistency remains as usual,” he said.

Ramiz didn’t believe that complacency was the reason for the big defeat.

England just came better prepared this time. At Lord’s the conditions suited Pakistan because of the low bounce. At Old Trafford they made sure there was plenty of bounce in the surface,” he said.

Another former captain Muhammad Yousuf also lamented that the Pakistani batsmen just didn’t show the quality on a pitch on which it was inexcusable not to get a big score.

“I expected players of the calibre of Younis Khan and Asad Shafiq to get hundreds here. The pitch was good for batting. I just can’t fathom what Younis is trying to do batting the way he is,” he said.

Yousuf said England had now got their confidence back in a big way after going down in the first Test and at Edgbaston Pakistan would have to perform outstandingly to prevent the host teams from taking a 2-1 lead in the four-match series.

Former wicketkeeper-batsman, Rashid Latif said he didn’t believe Pakistan was yet out of the series.

“Two matches remain and this Pakistan team has lot of potential. At Old Trafford the batting was horrible and there was no excuse for the poor show by our batters. They need to sit down and start afresh. For senior players like Hafeez and Younis to throw away their wickets after good starts is just not acceptable at this level,” he said.